Discovery Institute's Blog, page 229

Apology from the Management

Due to a computer-related glitch, you may have noticed that content on ENV has gone missing from the past few days. We apologize for the inconvenience and should have much of that restored soon. Meanwhile, thank you for your patience.

Photo source: Wikipedia.

Monkeys Aren't "Intellectual," Can't Copyright

Several readers have sent me the story of the intellectual property dispute between Wikimedia and a photographer with whose camera a monkey took a "selfie."

The photographer claims a copyright, but the Wiki world says no since he didn't actually take the photo. From the Washington Post story:

In an interview, Wikimedia Foundation's Chief Communications Officer Katherine Maher said the organization is confident that the legal basis for denying Slater's request is sound, because the person that...

Is There a Michelangelo Building Sandstone Arches?

Michelangelo reportedly taught novices how to carve a statue of David: you start with a block of marble, and chip away everything that doesn't look like David. Easier said than done!

Now the Renaissance sculptor's name has turned up in an unexpected place: a science article for BBC News about sandstone arches. The article reports on a new study in Nature Geoscience that explains how these beautiful, symmetric monuments are formed. Under a stunning photo of Rainbow Bridge, Jonathan Webb writes...

Video: Robert Marks Speaking to the American Scientific Affiliation on "Algorithmic Specified Complexity"

William Dembski will be talking at the University of Chicago next week about "Conservation of Information in Evolution Search" -- and Jerry Coyne is steamed: "Creationist Dembski gives academic talk at MY university!" Coyne finds it significant that in the official description of Dr. Dembski's presentation, a "Computations in Science" seminar, there's a typo in the spelling of "Discovery Institute." (The final "t" is omitted.) But can you spot the two factual errors in Coyne's headline?

Yes,...

Researchers Suggest Molecular Machine Is Irreducibly Complex

A new paper in Science, "Crystal structure of the CRISPR RNA-guided surveillance complex from Escherichia coli," discusses the structure of a molecular machine, "Cascade" (CRISPR-associated complex for antiviral defense), used in bacteria as part of their adaptive immune system. The paper describes the complex mechanism of assembly as well, but what's particularly noteworthy is this comment from an article at Science Daily about the paper:

"The structure of this biological machine is concept...

Phys.org: Specialized Retinal Cells Are a "Design Feature," Showing that the Argument for Suboptimal Design of the Eye "Is Folly"

In 2010, the pro-ID website Access Research Network (ARN) posted its Top Ten Darwin and Design Science News Stories of the year, and its No. 1 story was a paper in Physical Review Letters, "Retinal Glial Cells Enhance Human Vision Acuity." Why was this article ARN's top story for the year? Because it found that special "Müller glia cells" sit over the retina, acting like fiber-optic cables to channel light through the optic nerve wires directly onto the photoreceptor cells.

This refuted the...

For Bogus Science, Don't Forget to Blame the Media

Writing at Slate, Jane C. Hu uses the high-profile stem-cell research lies we have seen in recent years to launch into an interesting article, "Why Do Scientists Commit Fraud?" She discusses the bogus claim that skin cells could be turned into stem cells with chemicals (not the same thing as the actual breakthrough of induced pluripotent stem cells).

She describes cases I have also written about, such as the Hwang Woo-suk cloning fraud of several years ago and other bogus stem-cell studies. Sh...

In the Human Genome, Function Is There When You Look for It

There’s a highly emotional, not merely scientific, controversy raging about function. The ENCODE project announced that 80% of the human genome is functional, but as Jonathan Wells noted earlier, a group at Oxford University now claims only 8.2% is. Nature reports on the controversy without taking sides, but states that the dispute turns upon the way one defines function.

ENCODE assumed that if something is transcribed, it is functional. The Oxford group assumes something is functional if nat...

More Studies Show Children Are Wired for Religious Belief: A Brief Literature Review

Back in April, David Klinghoffer noted a story in the Wall Street Journal about how Boston University psychologist Deborah Kelemen advocates "suppressing" belief in a "God-like designer" by trying "to get young children to understand the mechanism of natural selection before the alternative intentional-design theory had become too entrenched." What was intriguing was not just how evolutionary scientists are scrambling to indoctrinate children against perceiving intelligent design in nature,...

When Ideology Trumps Science: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos on Global Warming

I finally had a chance to watch the twelfth, penultimate episode of Cosmos, "The World Set Free." I was out of the country in June when it originally aired, but since there's no doubt the series is headed into the schools and remains relevant, I'll take this opportunity to comment. The episode stands out from most previous installments. Just when we've grown accustomed to circuitous narrative threads with obscure segues from one topic to the next, we get an episode that focuses like a laser...